Venus of Brassempouy: fragment of a statuette in mammoth ivory – the oldest known representation of a human face (23.000 BCE)

● Man: a Musical Being ● Music and Nature ● What Is Music and Language? ● “The Singing Neanderthals” ● Embryos’ Stimuli and Baby Talk ● Talent ● The Art of Soul vs. the Art of Beauty ● Ecstasy and Catharsis ● “Anastenária” and the Impact of Music ● Ethos of Music

MAN IS BY NATURE A MUSICAL BEING; meaning that the song, the combination of music and lyrics, together with movement or dance, has always been a fundamental characteristic of humans, serving their various needs. Besides, music, speech, and dance, a “Holy Trinity” according to Palamâs, show how close the relationship between sound, body and soul is.

“Music – speech – dance: a Holy Trinity” (Kostês Palamâs)

The strange thing for us is that the ancients, even the primitives, felt the impact of musical sound onto their bodies much more intensely than modern humans. Obviously, Christianity and the Occidental mentality are largely responsible for the enormous degradation of our senses. Thus experts of many disciplines are now required to work together in order to fully understand this subject in depth.

Natural sounds played a key role in the genesis of music: sounds of Nature, human voices, the sounds of their tools, constituted raw “materials” that gradually began to take shape. According to Darwin, a primary stimulus has been the animal cries, especially during breeding season, when an orgasm of sounds and movements prevails, so rich and varied that man inevitably imitates responding to that call of Nature’s Choir. Man, however, as a species of the animal kingdom, has congenitally had his own “repertoire” which he gradually enriched – initially by imitation and later by inspiration.

The emergence of art was directly linked to elementary manifestations of magic, even before the latter was systematized to some form of religion. Cave paintings, of a much later period compared to music, are examples of utilitarian art: men tried to exorcise the animal they depicted so as to have plenty of game, or propitiate its “spirit” in case of an awe-inspiring beast. That is why the cave paintings are usually not found in the “living room” of the cave, but deep inside, at the “sanctuary”…

Spirit propitiation had broader applications: e.g. to natural phenomena that seemed supernatural, or during work time to coordinate movements, or even to master the “spirit” of the stone or wood that men wished to turn into a tool. Music played a key role in such cases. But it was lost in the mists of time. Today, millennia later, we can comfortably admire the cavemen’s performance in visual arts. But who has ever listened to their songs?

The question above is rather rhetoric. However, there is another question that is crucial to be answered: What is music? What’s its origin?

Music is found everywhere, in every culture or civilization, even the most isolated tribes: it is a characteristic of the human species – perhaps of other species, as well. At any rate, music is influenced by all aspects of a culture or civilization, including socio-economic organization, lifestyle, climate, technology… The emotions and ideas expressed by music, the situations in which it is played, the attitudes toward musicians and composers – all these vary according to space and time.

(a) A shaman is a person regarded as having access to the “world of spirits”, entering into a trance state (very different from normal waking consciousness), and acting as a diviner or healer.

Magdalenian horse (15.000-10.000 BCE): a game, long before it was tamed.

If the imitation of a bird song is considered music, then the bird song itself may also be regarded as music! Indeed, according to a study of zoomusicology,(b) bird songs are based on musical principles: those of repetition and transformation. And it’s not only birds: whales and dolphins have also exceptional vocal capabilities, while monkeys are unrivaled on drums and percussion while beating hollow logs, perhaps in order to demarcate their territories, creating rhythmic patterns in which some experts detect elements of “dialogue”, “call and response”.

(b)Zoomusicology is the study of “music” made by non-human animals, or rather the musical aspects of sounds produced or received by them as a means of their communication. It is described as the “aesthetic use of sound communication among animals.”

Of course, everything depends on our definition of music – that is, whether a “musician” has the intention to stir up emotion through his sounds, which is probably linked to his ability to reflect about time (past and future). Men became artists sometime between 60 and 30 thousand years ago creating cave paintings, jewelry and other artifacts, while they started burying their dead with rituals. It was a form of “cultural revolution”. If we assume that those new forms of behaviour suggested the emergence of consciousness, then music – as we know it – appeared in the same period. But this is a rather narrow conception of music. As it usually happens in Africa so far, in prehistory too the concept of music was broader, including dance and worship. At that time it also served communication among the members of a group of people helping to coordinate action and strengthen their bonds. Thus, its role was crucial to their survival.

Music evokes strong emotions and opens paths to other states of awareness. In general, strong emotions are associated with evolution (reproduction and survival). Darwin pointed out the importance of music to sexual selection.(c) Singing and dancing require large energy reserves. Therefore, a singer-dancer, like a peacock displaying its feathers, is more likely to attract a mate to date. There is a counterargument though: in most species using singing in the selection of mates, it is the female that chooses and the male that sings – as a rule alone. In the human species, however, music is mostly a team sport where everyone is involved. Man is the only mammal having mixed choirs (with men, women and children). Something similar is found only in certain species of Australian and African songbirds with males and females singing in chorus.

(c) “When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, – would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph, – and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions.” (Darwin, The Descent of Man)

The first musical “instrument” was obviously the voice of man who, even before he could master speech, had a vast range of expressive sounds: singing, humming, whistling (a gamut of styles), producing various sounds through the mouth, imitating natural sounds, shouting, laughing, crying, coughing, yawning… (See Darwin’s The Origin of Species on music and speech). Add motion to all these sounds: not only dance, but also grimaces, gestures and movements of individual body parts (head, arms and legs). Similarly, the first percussion “instruments” were hand claps, finger snaps, stones, wood and whatever could be used to accentuate rhythm. Man-made instruments appeared much later when humans started making tools.

Let me make clear by the way that talking about “men”, in fact, I refer to the Hominini. The oldest tools found in today’s Tanzania were made 2.6 million years ago, that is, before the emergence of the various human species (Homo). We suppose that the first tools were made by Australopithecus who transmitted this knowledge to Homo habilis. Our ancestors passed to a new phase of tool-making 1.7 million years ago with Homo erectus. I maintain, therefore, that sound preceded speech and that music, song, a capella (without instrumental accompaniment), emerged together with voice as a characteristic of some Hominini or even Hominids. Besides, we already know that music was not born with Homo sapiens – who, as they say, were musically not as talented as the Neanderthals!

“The Singing Neanderthals”
(Steven Mithen)
In the beginning was the sound:
music is older than speech

In his study The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body,Steven Mithen, an archaeologist and professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England, expands mainly two ideas: a) the parallel development of what modern man calls music and language, and b) his original idea that the Neanderthals had a peculiar proto-music/language: it was holistic (not composed of segmented elements), manipulative (influencing emotional states and hence behaviour of oneself and others), multimodal (using both sound and movement), musical (temporally controlled, rhythmic, and melodic), and mimetic (utilizing sound symbolism and gesture) – “a pre-linguistic musical mode of thought and action.” That is why, as Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca have said, “many suppose that chanting is the earliest form of language.” (See Voyage 4).

A Neanderthal woman in an aggressive stance is rather misleading since, according to a National Geographic article, the genes that are associated with the aggressive behaviour of modern man were probably absent in the Neanderthal DNA. This may explain their disappearance…

Those “Singing Neanderthals”, according to Mithen, had a vocal tract and respiratory control that could have enabled speech, but they lacked the neural network that was necessary for language. This simply means that in the beginning was the sound: music preceded speech.(d) Moreover, pre-sapiens hominids such as the Neanderthals probably lacked metaphorical thought – the ability to have in mind at the same time information from several different cognitive domains. Symbolic artifacts have not been found in their dwelling sites, indicating the absence of symbolic thought and hence symbolic utterance: spoken language. Yet the challenges faced in such a hostile environment during the Ice Age required complex emotional communication and cooperation. So they developed a “music-like communication system that was more complex and more sophisticated than that found in any of the previous species of Homo”. Mithen emphasizes the importance of “emotional intelligence” – the ability to express one’s feelings with face, voice, and body, and decode the emotional signals of others.

Music as the Mother of Speech
(Rousseau, Herder, Humboldt, Darwin)

(d)Music (singing) as the Mother of Speech (language) is an idea shared by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Darwin. We get an idea if we examine the pronunciation in several languages. Closer to the original source are tonal languages, such as Chinese, where each syllable is uttered with a different note or pitch. Then it’s the pitch accent languages, such as ancient Hellenic, where only the stressed syllable is uttered at a higher pitch. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the interval between the accented and non-accented syllables reached to an anything but negligible fifth interval (e.g. Mi-Si, see also our previous Voyage 9). Lastly, there are dynamic languages like Modern Greek with the stress given through an increased volume of the voice but not a higher pitch. We can understand the difference in ancient Hellenic poetry where the accents had no effect on the rhythm of the poetic metres as they would if the stress was dynamic. The poetic rhythm was musical, prosodic (alternating long and short vowels), not dynamic. [Προσῳδία – ancient prosody: originally a song with music accompaniment].

Singing was also preferable to talking. Why were the symbols of spoken words less reliable than an emotional melody? What were the pros and cons of language?

“What is language? What’s its origin?” – reads the notice at the entrance of a Congress Palace where a thought-provoking international symposium is taking place. Inside the building, of course, everyone… disagrees with everyone else; however, there is a recurring theme of almost paramount consent, something that escaped even Darwin’s attention: a prerequisite for the emergence of language, they say, is that there must be trust within the tribe – what we now call “society”! Therefore, some kind of social transformation generated unprecedented levels of public trust, liberating a potential for linguistic creativity. Under normal conditions, as the saying goes, “words are cheap”, “double-talk”, unreliable symbols on which the tribe could not count for survival – in other words, language was not trusted to become an evolutionarily stable strategy.

When a cat purrs, the signal constitutes direct evidence of the animal’s contented state. We trust the signal because it just can’t fake that sound. Vocal calls of the primates may not be so trustworthy. Their social intelligence is characterized as “Machiavellian” – self-serving and without moral scruples. Monkeys and apes often attempt to deceive one another, while at the same time remaining constantly on guard against falling victim to deception themselves! Paradoxically, this very trait is theorized as blocking the evolution of a language-like communication among them! A verbal signal sounds like the shout “Wolves!” by a shepherd trying to fool the others in the well-known pedagogical moralizing story. Once proven false nobody takes it for granted or even cares. Therefore, socially reliable institutions are necessary, where every scoundrel, either “monkey” or “shepherd”, is accountable. In a hunter-gatherer society, a basic mechanism inspiring trust is the collective ritual. (In our society, all the above adequately explain our crisis…)

Last but not least is what we call “baby talk” – not the talk of a baby still unable to speak, but the one used by adults (usually mothers) while addressing infants, touching and caressing them: a melodic and undulating language, combined with strong gestures, exaggerated facial expressions and rhythmic head and body movements. This is indeed a language as the baby understands the meaning of all these sounds and movements: that is, comprehends the mother’s intentions. In this sense, such a language is similar to music having two main functions: to strengthen the mother-child relationship, and help the infant to speak. This way its chances of survival increase. Man’s ability to synchronize himself with an external pulse – which is probably unknown to other mammals, including primates – derived from the primordial mother-infant interaction which in time transformed itself into a proto-music, and also a proto-language.

“Baby talk” has a similar “vocabulary” in all cultures. The way mothers and babies raise and lower their voices, change simultaneously expressions and move their hands is similar everywhere, despite linguistic differences such as between musical and dynamic languages. The reasons may be genetic or environmental – in the sense that all embryos grow in a similar environment and can hear twenty weeks before birth, far longer than other animals, most of which cannot hear before birth. During these weeks, the human fetus can also perceive movement and orientation. In addition it senses the emotional state of the mother via the internal sounds of her body (voice, heartbeat, footsteps, digestion, etc.) and in this way adjusts its postnatal demands (e.g. crying), improving the chances of its survival. The embryo’s capacity to learn and remember sound patterns seems to confirm this theory. In this case, the internal sounds of the human body and their relationship with the emotional state may be associated with the relationship between audio-rhythmic patterns in music and their strong emotional charge.

“The human being is a musical being by man’s very nature”. (Iégor Reznikoff)

“Man”, Iégor Reznikoff remarked,(e) “is a speaking being. However, I am absolutely sure that he is also a musical, a singing being, like the birds. We know that the various species of birds are also distinguished by the way they sing. The same happens with humans who are distinguished not only by their speech, but also by their singing.

(e) Reznikoff’s remarks were recorded by Despina Paisidou-Lazaridou in Delphi in 1986 for the radio program “I Learn As I Live” (ERT-3). It was when I started “flying” in the airwaves as a “chronicler”, presenter and music supervisor during the first round of the program on “The Chronicle of Music”. The making of a radio program, however, was something that I learned watching the producer Katy Vlachou with her immense patience and open mind: she let me present in public mass media what I was not allowed to do at the time in a… private one (Thessalonica newspaper).

“These features, I believe, are part of human nature. They are deeply connected with man’s organic nature – his ears and throat, that is, his vocal capacities. That’s how he is born and created since his conception. A child e.g. can hear even when it is in the womb of its mother as a fetus and remembers some elements of music and its mother’s voice or her song.(f)

(f) “The voices and audio stimuli to which a fetus is exposed during pregnancy are not only perceived but also recorded in its memory”, a scientific team concluded in a study. “Thus, if as a fetus it listened to soft music of natural instruments, as an infant it immediately calms and quiets down under the same sounds, while another baby, who had no such experience when it was in the belly of its mother, keeps on screaming”…
Besides, except the “Singing Neanderthals”, there are also the “Singing Embryos”! A research showed that fetuses react to sound stimuli and “sing”… Researchers at Institut Marquès in Barcelona showed that a fetus can detect sounds and even react moving its mouth and tongue, proving that the ears of the embryo are fully developed by the 16th week of pregnancy. The lead researcher said that the fetuses responded to music moving their mouths as if they were trying to talk or sing. Music activates the part of the brain associated with communication and when the embryos hear it they react with movements similar to those of the cry, which is the first stage before speaking and singing.

“Music is deeply rooted in humans. Singing is a characteristic of the human species. It is not something recent in man’s social life. The mechanism of hearing and its relationship with speech is characterized by complexity and located deep inside the brain. Thus it cannot be something recent. In short: the human being is a musical being by man’s very nature.”

Generally speaking, the different species are born as tabula rasa regarding their acquired qualities – those that must be gained after birth, depending on the current conditions faced by each species for its survival. But they bear in their DNA all those inherited capacities and qualities that emerged as acquired (upright position, articulation, etc.) and ensured the survival of the species during the millennia of its evolution. It is where all the wisdom of the past is stored – together, of course, with natural musical capacities.

The Music Lesson (also Herculaneum, a city richer than neighbouring Pompeii, early 1st century AD)

However, talent, an innate musical inclination or “musical ear”, do not characterize all persons but rather a minority. How comes that some of them can sing beautifully or at least correctly, while others, who equally love music, sing out of tune?

“There is innate musical disposition, musical talent, which is often hereditary: see the Bach family”, said Professor Demetris Thémeles “But in general terms, everyone can learn music up to a point. Most people sing out of tune because they’ve had no proper musical education – except in some cases where they may have some physical problem e.g. hearing impairment. Or they may listen properly and have some feel for music, but face some problem in the larynx muscles. There are cases of distinguished musicians, productive composers, who are ‘cacophonous’, that is, they cannot sing well because of such problems.”

Nevertheless, in the Third World and, moreover, in the countryside, anywhere far from metropolitan urban centres, that is, wherever children are naturally brought up, almost everyone can sing and dance well. How comes? Here’s an answer by Ellen Dissanayake:

“It is not spoken language itself that overlays or stunts musical ability, but the factors in modernized societies that have made music a specialty – individuality, competitiveness, compartmentalization, and institutionalization – reinforced by the high degree of literate (not oral improvisatory) training required to read (and compose) musical scores as well as literary texts. In small-scale pre-modern societies (and in any large modern sub-Saharan African city, as well in children anywhere who are customarily exposed to frequent communal musical activity), everyone participates in music – regularly, spontaneously, and wholeheartedly – and benefits thereby from the many adaptive advantages” it offers.

Iégor Reznikoff

You can see, therefore, how crucial is the role of the mother, as well as that of the family or social environment in general, for the development of a child’s innate musical inclination. This must be the explanation for the existence not only of musical families, but also of musical tribes such as gypsies and blacks. Not everything is hereditary, despite the important role of heredity: the potential capacities must be cultivated; otherwise they remain dormant, inert, like some atrophic member.

“We can say that African Americans have this divine gift”, Reznikoff commented, referring to the innate inclination, the special talent. “Africans have a long tradition in music and singing. Furthermore, they have kept some primitive ways of expression and emotion, and thus they are probably closer to antiquity. The ancient Greeks also loved singing and dancing very much, as the Arabs do now.

“Since we are human beings, with the senses of audition and vision, it happens that we have constants in art. These constants in music have to do with the natural laws of resonance and consonance: when a chord is vibrating, it follows the laws that govern the sound, producing sounds and harmonics that delight our ears – therefore, our bodies respond.

“It is striking that an instrument like thecitharacan be found in all cultures. The behaviour of a string and our bodies is the same everywhere. Something similar happens with the auloi. Note that these instruments have been used in different ways in all cultures. But with few exceptions, and apart from modern Western civilization, we can see everywhere the same musical laws to apply. It is a global concept of consonance precisely because we are dealing with a natural law.

“This concept, however, was lost since the early 19th century when the piano was introduced into music changing the natural tuning of the instruments; because the piano is tuned differently, with the equal intervals of the tempered scale. This tuning is wrong if we consider it from the point of view of natural resonance. It is due to the enormous development of music – but a kind of cultivated, sentimental, conceptual music which has abandoned its natural foundation that is rooted in our body and soul.

“The same has happened in painting: we have the ancient art or even iconography, and then we have the art of beauty, even if it depicts saints or Theotokos. See Raphael’s Madonna: she is really beautiful, her movements are beautiful, and art lies in this beauty, not in the power exerted deep inside your soul by an icon. We have lost these deep roots related to our biological bodies – because we must not forget that we are material beings obeying to natural laws. Nowadays art is too conceptual as e.g. abstract art, or even electronic music with computers.

“In antiquity people had delicate, fine ears catching all nuances. The lyre was a ‘soft’ instrument like the old traditional ones. When one listened to music on those instruments, he used his spirit even more – let us also remember the long texts of old songs. Now, of course, we have all those huge pieces of machinery with the many decibels! All instruments are amplified and modified for that purpose. The violin is already a ‘hard’ instrument like the piano.

“I personally believe in a natural approach of antiquity – without imitating and copying it. We must go back to the delicate acoustics of antiquity, because finally man remains the same body and soul. These natural laws – so rich that they have created all those cultures – are like oxygen for us. In the big cities, of course, we may live in air pollution but we are not made for this: it is better for us to breathe fresh air…

“Music’s purpose in antiquity was not just fun. It mainly had to do with the invisible world. This is also true for the Pythagoreans, and later for the Platonic school or previously for the Orphic tradition which influenced the Christian Church. For the Orphic tradition, music actually serves as a link to the invisible: for the preparation of the journey of the soul after death to eternity”…

The “labyrinth” of Reznikoff’s thought, the contraposition between “soft” and “hard” instruments may confuse us. The key to grasping its essence lies in that apt example from the art of painting. Sweet melodies and gentle voices e.g. in most lullabies are the equivalent of Raphael’s Madonna. Quite the contrary was what Plato has suggested about children that cannot go promptly to sleep: “mothers do not offer them peace, but rock them instead, and in this artless way they make the kids fall asleep”. If you experiment, they say, you see that the… Platonic technique is highly effective!

A similar misunderstanding seems to obsess psychotherapists who choose music with soft sounds, having waters trickling and birds singing as a… garnish in the background. Exactly the opposite was what the ancients were after during their psychotherapeutic rituals with the deliberately intense and monotonously repetitive music.

“Fire cleanses, while water purifies”, said Plutarch. Catharsis in ancient Hellas was the mental and moral purification through Dionysianecstasy.(g) Using suitable melodies and rhythms, they caused the mentally disturbed person to flush to such a degree that a reaction would follow bringing him back to his previous normal condition. They were methods of magic surviving even in the “civilized” world until the 60s. Now that we have become so very “cultured”, musical sounds can hardly excite us…

(g) This is the original meaning of the word and not the one suggested in periods of political corruption. Catharsis, according to Aristotle, was what the audience in a Greek tragedy was subjected to through feelings of pity and fear caused by the heroes’ suffering and tragic end.

Catharsis was the mental and moral purification through Dionysian ecstasy. The spectators of tragedy were subjected to catharsis through feelings of pity and fear caused by the heroes’ suffering and tragic end. (Aristotle)

“There was a close link between swamps (sources of infections and fever), the subsequent neuromental disorders and their cure with music in the therapeutic rituals of the Korybantes and the Bacchantes”,(h) wrote Denise Jourdan-Hemmerdinger in the synopsis of her paper on Music in the Therapeutic Rituals of the Korybantes and the Bacchantes, at the Musicological Symposium in Delphi in 1988. “These data allow a better reading of ancient texts. We can reconstruct them not anymore in an entirely irrational context with widespread mysticism, but in a reality with tragic experiences in the time line.

“Thus, the biological and pathological cause of hallucinations reappears as an archetype of the mythological and dreamlike world of fantasy. Although the monotheistic religions expelled the ancient gods who played a therapeutic role, they did not eliminate malaria – a scourge as old as the world but always present. This Thraco-Phrygian and Orphico-Pythagorean music therapy survived more or less in some folk, religious or pagan, traditions.

“What did these specific kinds of music consist of? What level of body and soul did they affect on? How and why were they effective? The texts give us an idea. Can we get even further? Obviously, if we work on this rich and diverse file with a fortunate conjuncture of data of the geographical and ethnological hematology, and medical anthropology – sciences that already contain a wealth of information – adding the results of ethnomusicological studies, without forgetting medieval and ancient musicology, either Oriental or Occidental.”(i)

(i) With this… Sibyllic synopsis, Jourdan-Hemmerdinger tried to give some idea, drop a hint, to the audience about her paper. Unfortunately, she had a formidable opponent: relentless time. Within a very short time – granted to each speaker – she had to expand on her vast thesis that could be the subject of a separate symposium. The… machine gun tempo she chose to say “everything” in time eventually proved to be a boomerang for her and her extremely interesting topic.

Anastenária’s most striking feature is probably this “incombustibility”, or “immunity from fire” – the (seeming, at least) negation of a natural law. This part of the ritual stirs our imagination so much that almost everyone forgets to mention the key role of music and dance which, as many experts say, contribute to an emotional release and thus have a therapeutic effect on the participants. In a sense, therefore, the ceremony is a psychotherapeutic ritual system.

Music and dance contribute to an emotional release
and thus have a therapeutic effect on the participants.

These systems, according to Levi-Strauss, provide the patient with a gateway to express inexpressible states. During the therapeutic process the participant receives from outside a social myth that has no conflicts and, therefore, does not correspond to his previous personal condition. In this context, reality is compelled to identify with this social myth. Without music and dance, however, methexis is not possible:

“Monotonous music”, the psychiatrist Constantinos Constantinides wrote in his Notes on Fire Walking of Anastenária and a Possible Explanation of Incombustibility, “is a prerequisite to a change of mental mood, creating an equivalent emotional state, and triggering the subcortical (motor and emotional) centres, so as everything is automatically and easily executed, eliminating the inhibitory effect of the cortex.

“Motivated in general also by music, dance is known as a largely automatic event and as such a new prerequisite to the creation of the whole mental ecstatic state, and even more if it is religious. That is why all primitive religions are ‘danced’; all happy events are ‘danced’. When dancing, there is a peculiar emotional state; there is more automation and unconscious function; there is more or less self-absorption and a break of contact with the environment. One could say that dance is a certain step to ecstasy, opens the way to the phenomenon of ecstasy.”

“Dance is a certain step to ecstasy, opens the way to the
phenomenon of ecstasy.” (Constantinos Constantinides)

“Music in particular seems to coordinate a tendency to group unification”, another psychiatrist, Pantelés Kranidiotes, commented on his part, analyzing Anastenaria as a Psychosomatic Phenomenon. “C[onstantinos] Romeos realized just that, saying ‘music makes the human soul to feel such desolation that it desires to mingle with the other dancers seeking to let it go’. On the other hand, P[olydoros] Papachristodoulou underlines the impact of music on these people saying that music ‘exerts some particular influence on the nervous system of hysterical, naïve peasants’.

Davul

“But anyway, regardless of the quality of the receiver, everyone would perceive this fascinating power of music, if above all he experienced the crucially overwhelmingdavulin the ‘hangout’, where ‘all the spectators were agitated and rocked’ under its sounds.

“Emotional arousal is inevitable when music is more familiar. This is obviously the aim of conflating this religious ceremony with songs, which clearly translate the various deepest emotions of the people’s psyche and where above all is the dominion of heroic elements, which can only bring about an arousing, wild ecstasy.

“This combination seems much more efficient to induce the required emotional orgy than the ecclesiastical chants and hymns, which are totally absent in this religious ceremony, as they produce a rather static ecstasy.

“This music of fire dancers, which over the centuries is familiar to them, is a creation and property of their own emotional universe and that is why it can definitely stir it and indeed with an intensely arousing way. But here it seems that rhythm plays the main role in music and – as the musicologist Mr. [Pantelés] Kavakópoulos says – ‘what excites the fire dancers is the davul with its varying rhythms’.”(j)

(j) It is obvious that these psychiatrists look on the fire dancers “from on high”: they are “hysterical, naïve peasants” with “the people’s psyche”, immersed in “an arousing, wild ecstasy” that is described as an “emotional orgy”, under the sounds of a music that is a “property of their own emotional universe”… They recognize, however, that the impact of this music and dance, in that particular environment, is equally catalytic “regardless of the quality of the receiver”, apparently having in mind that now among the fire dancers we can also find the names of several “hysterical, naïve”… scientists and intellectuals!

Relief of a maenad holding a tympanum

Rhythm, inextricably connected to dance, is the first musical element man experiences. The first sound the fetus hears is mother’s rhythmic heartbeat, long before it enjoys her singing – if, of course, she has a sweet voice. But even if she doesn’t, the pulse is there, recorded in the deepest subcortical centres of the brain; when excited, man’s inhibitions are neutralized and that’s how he is overwhelmed with ecstasy, acting not as an individual but as a member of a group.(k)Melody, the second element of music, on the other hand, is intentionally monotonous and persistently repetitious, while the lyrics are just as rudimentary: precisely to prevent the re-activation of the cortex and achieve the culmination of ecstasy.

(k) Music has been my first profession already since my high school years next to my father, Iannes Loukovikas. I remember that since then, due also to my music education, I wondered, and was annoyed, as well, whenever an audience glorified a drummer, or anyone playing percussion, in his solo, although his performance was not as difficult as the other musicians’, who nevertheless never received such a warm and loud applause. The answer to this childish question of mine is given in this Voyage…

The first sound a fetus hears, mother’s heartbeat, is recorded deep
inside the brain; when excited, man’s inhibitions are neutralized and, ecstatic, acts not as an individual but as a member of a group.

Cybele with a tympanum, bronze statuette (2nd century AD)

Such phenomena could not go unnoticed by ancient Greek philosophers who have seen with their own eyes how crucial the role of rhythm is for the preservation, modification or loss of ethos in music. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others have investigated the ethos of rhythm, melody, genera and harmonies or modes, not only because music was the foundation of education, but also because – quite rightly – they considered music as a form of language, capable of expressing as much as speech and exerting a catalytic effect on people, especially youth.

“There is nothing among people that is performed without music”,Aristides Quintilianus used to say, while Plutarch noted that “the formation and preparation [of young people] to be good [citizens is achieved] through music”, for Orpheus’ art is beneficial “on everyone and every well-instructed act”, concluding: “Foul music and wicked songs lead to prodigal morals and unmanly lives, and men to indulgence and flabbiness and effeminacy”…

The ethos of music is generally distinguished as exuberant – the one causing agitation or excitement; restrained – that is, the opposite; or serene – that calms down. Apparently these comprehensive philosophical studies were based on observations on ancient folk rituals similar to the musical therapeutic ceremonies. Philosophers have found that every rhythmic or melodic movement causes certain emotional reactions, positive or negative – depending on the intended purpose. Thus they concluded that the sounds with the beneficial effects should be praised and the others to be condemned.

The ethos of music – of rhythm, melody, genera and harmonies or modes – was distinguished as exuberant, restrained, or serene.

Naturally, the concept of ethos, which was the focus of attention of every philosopher, was also used for the condemnation of every musical innovation by the conservatives, as we have already seen in our previous Voyage. In no way, however, does this fact mean that musical ethos is worthless for us. Why else should that ancient Hellenic concept be adopted by Persians and Arabs?

On the other hand, isn’t this concept completely unknown today? Why should we care about the ethos of music (and not only of music) in an exceptionally unethical era in every respect? Isn’t it an… anachronism?

Dear reader, my dearest fellow traveler, don’t you think that having come thus far, it means there is a deeper and serious reason?

PERICLES’ “GOLDEN AGE”, the period of the greatest acme of ancient Hellenic civilization, coincided paradoxically with the years of “decline” that seemed to fall upon the Greeks since the mid-5th century. This downward trend was a kind of omen foretelling, like a Cassandra, about the upcoming “civil” Peloponnesian War. The most dramatic reaction then to “remedy the evil” was… anti-dramatic: the polis of Athens decreed in 440 BCE the cessation of all theatrical and musical activities for four years!

“Do not maltreat our music!” (Spartan ephori)

Performing in Sparta those days with his “modern” at the time nine-string cithara, Phrynis of Mytilene encountered the angry outcry of the ephori (ephors) who, shouting out “Do not maltreat our music!”, forcibly removed the two “extra” strings and obliged him to play with the “classical” (in the 5th century) seven-string cithara.(a)

(a) Ecprepes, an Ephor, cut out with an adze two of the nine strings of Phrynis the musician, saying, “Do not maltreat music.” (Plutarch, Moralia).
Quite moral, indeed! The “evil” was “corrected” with an adze!

Was it, indeed, a manifestation of the ephori’s extreme conservatism, or had Phrynis – a leader of the innovative school with an exceptionally melismatic and modulative style – perhaps gone too far and actually maltreated music? We shall never know: first of all, we did not… listen to him playing. But even if we’d heard him play, we’d still be unable to make up our minds judging by our own ears – by our own standards, if you like, i.e. by our current criteria on music.

But Pherecrates, a contemporary comic poet and musician, was strongly in favour of the ephori, if we consider that in his comedy, Chiron, he presented Music as complaining to Justice for abuses committed by innovators such as Timotheus of Miletus, Melanippides of Melos and Phrynis – whom, however, the comedian forgave because when he grew older he came… to his senses! On the contrary, Pherecrates threw several brickbats at Timotheus and Melanippides who remained unrepentant until the end, playing their even “worse” twelve-string instruments.

Comic playwrights, however, with their innate conservatism, permit me to say, are not the most reliable sources, judging by the way Aristophanes has “taken care” of another great innovator, Euripides. The tragedian believed in Timotheus’ talent, while Aristotle, together with other philosophers, also praised the work of the modernists:

“Without Timotheus”, the thinker of Stagira wrote in his Metaphysics, “we would not have so many melodic compositions, and without [his teacher and also formidable rival] Phrynis, we would not have Timotheus either.”

“Laconism (brevity) is the soul of wit”, the ancients remarked. But the Spartan ephori set out to… disprove them, hurriedly expelling Timotheus from their polis by decree, which the Roman philosopher Boethius preserved:

“For Timotheus of Miletus came to our city and dishonoured our ancient music by despising the seven-string lyre, and also corrupted the ears of the young people by introducing a greater variety of sounds, and gave music a feminine and sophisticated character by increasing the number of strings;

“For he depraved the melody’s simplicity and soberness, which it had thus far, instead of preserving it;

“We, the king and the ephori, declare we criticize Timotheus, and additionally compel him to remove from the nine strings those that are not necessary leaving only seven; and we banish him from our polis setting him as an example for all those who would like to introduce to Sparta some improper practice in the future”…(b)

(b) Timotheus was fool enough to go to Laconia despite Phrynis’ reception… In our previous Voyage we referred to the four basic modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian). There were also three genera (diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic). Each one of these modes and genera, and also rhythms, had its own ethos. It seems that people like the Spartan ephori, or even Athenian elitists such as Plato, preferred the Dorian mode and the diatonic genus, and disliked all the rest. This might’ve been the reason for the… “ephoral” rage rather than the multi-string instruments themselves, which simply enabled the able musicians to modulate through modes and genera. We have seen the same circles condemning the multi-string instruments as unmanly and effeminate. It is no coincidence that this attitude was shared by later conservatives such as the Catholic leaders. In the 11th century they rejected the chromatic and enharmonic genera and retained only the “harder and more natural” diatonic genus, “for the diatonic is very firm and virile, the chromatic very soft and feminine, the enharmonic dissonant and moreover useless”…(*)(*) …“quia diatonum firmissimum et virilem, chromaticum mollissimum et feminilem, enharmoniumque dissonum insuper et inutilem.” Quoted in Adrien de La Fage, Essais de diphthérographie musicale (Paris, 1864), from a manuscript originating at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

Orpheus depicted on an old Greek stamp

The ephori’s “puritanism” was not just a phenomenon of the years of “decline”. This mentality of “supervising everything” characterized them also in the past bringing them into conflict – among others – with another Lesbian musician, the famous Terpander, legendary heir to Orpheus’ lyre,(c) who lived from the late 8th to the mid-7th century, that is, in the so-called “creative” times. In fact, he spent most of his life in Sparta, where he was called in during a period of political crisis to… pour oil on troubled waters! Indeed, he was able to restore peace and tranquility in the city with his music composed specially for the occasion! But the ephori, instead of thanking him, demanded… an apology because he played – alas! – a seven-string cithara and not a “traditional” – at the time – four-string instrument! They could not even suspect that these specific peace-restoring compositions could not be played on a four-string instrument…

The Spartan ephori could not even suspect that Terpander’s compositions could not be played on a four-string instrument…

(c) Legend says that when the ThracianMaenads killed Orpheus – either because he failed to honour Dionysus, or because he… spurned their advances – they cut him to pieces and threw him and his lyre into the sea. The waves carried his head and the instrument to Lesbos, where some fishermen found and delivered them to Terpander. He kept the lyre and looked after the burial of his great colleague.

Hosanna! There was an intervention – as “deus ex machina” – by Apollo himself, whose lyre, by… “divine coincidence”, was also seven-string! It was confirmed by a rumour that craftily circulated those days. Thus, even with the seal of the DelphicOracle, “the Spartans honoured the Lesbian songwriter”, according to Heraclides Ponticus (PonticHeraclea, 4th century BCE), adding: “for God commanded them through prophesies to listen to him”. Accustomed to exaggerate (let alone it was a divine command to obey to Terpander), the Spartans subsequently placed everyone “after the Lesbian songwriter”, as Aristotle wrote.

The predominance of the art of this incomparable in his time citharoedus at the expense of the ephori’sscholasticism benefited in many ways the Spartans, who secured not only a peacemaker in times of political turmoil, but also the founder of their musical life. They also say that Terpander was – among other things – the first to invent a kind of musical notation for the proper performance of the Homericepics.

The opposite happened millennia later with the notorious report On Literature, Music and Philosophy by the ephori’s descendant, Zhdanov, whom Stalin considered an expert also on issues of music because he could… “play the piano a little bit”! In his report of June 24, 1947, the “father” of “socialist realism”, who had nationalized in 1934 even… culture so as to turn it into a political tool, demanded from the famous composers Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Shebalin to repent publicly, denouncing themselves! What a pity there was no Pythia anymore…

It was the nadir of a cultural policy aimed at creating… yes-men in literature and the arts – a policy that undermined the highest interests not only of culture, but also of the revolution. Note that it was not restricted in the Soviet Union but was also imposed on all “sister” parties. The Zhdanov report was discussed by Greek party intellectuals even on the barren islands of exile: it was unanimously approved! There was only one “dissonant” voice: that of Ares Alexandrou…

Well, starting from historical paradoxes, we have ended up to historical parallels, which are often detrimental to historical truth. Spontaneously we are in solidarity with the musicians and confront the… “Zhdanovist” ephori with disgust. In reality, however, we cannot be absolutely sure – especially in times of “decline” – which side was finally right: Phrynis and Timotheus or the ephori? Let alone that the above slogan of the “villains” fits perfectly well into the current situation concerning our music and, I think, we should all cry out loud rhythmically and in chorus: DO NOT MAL–TREAT OUR MU–SIC!

Our only certainty is probably that these historical episodes refer to professional musicians, heirs of a long tradition starting since very old times – since prehistory. Once mankind began producing more than what was absolutely necessary, resulting in surplus product which certain individuals gradually appropriated and thus constituted themselves as a separate class, since that moment musicians emerged as a separate profession.

First-rate musicians in the Orient were closely connected with the royal courts and the clergy – if they were not courtiers or priests themselves. The situation changed later in ancient Hellas due to climatic conditions that were mild and did not necessitate strong central power. These conditions nurtured a similar attitude among the Greeks and a relaxed relationship with the gods. The development of democratic ideas took place in the same context, as I have already tried to explain (see Voyages 2and 2*).

The Hellenes have had open and inquiring minds exactly because they’ve been open to the outside world as a result of the same conditions. Just a look at a map of Greece explains why. Thus, the oriental influence has been catalytic. The ancients, however, unlike us, did not like to… “copy and paste”. They adapted every recipe to their tastes by adding or removing ingredients. They borrowed their writing from the Cretans already in the 17th century BCE, after making the necessary changes to meet the requirements of their language (Minoan and MycenaeanLinear A and B scripts, respectively), and around the 9th century BCE received (most probably from the Phoenicians) the symbols with which they formed their alphabet – a real alphabet (and not an abjad) with letters for consonants and vowels alike. Using the same symbols (what would be more sensible?), they arrived to the point to also invent musical writing (notation) as early as the 7th-6th century BCE.

SeikilosEpitaph (1st century BCE or CE), engraved on a stele, is the oldest extant complete musical composition in the world: its main part, the song (excluding the prologue and epilogue), bears symbols denoting the melody.

“The Hellenes had musical notation well before the 6th century BC”,Iégor Reznikoff said at the 2nd Musicological Symposium in Delphi in 1986. “They were very good in keeping records; that’s why we know so much about ancient Greek tradition and return to it, as many other traditions had no musical writing and thus we know nothing about them.”

“Many ancient notations were invented by priests for priests and cantors, and some were even kept secret”,Curt Sachs remarked.

Music, with its catalytic effect on humans, was a deadly enemy of any religion, but also a mighty weapon in the hands of the priests who made sure that knowledge around this art was top secret.

A culture with a script was not necessarily a culture with a musical script; and if the notation existed, it might have been… top secret! Music, with its catalytic effect on humans and its magical powers, was a deadly enemy of any religion, but also a mighty weapon in the hands of the priests who made sure that knowledge around this art was a well-kept secret within the very select circle of initiates.

Music lesson (lyre class)

So, the Hellenes might not have been the initiators in the field of musical notation, but they first used it not for religious-authoritarian purposes but for didactic reasons, given that music was at the heart of education provided to children since they were six. Here we can find some differences between the cultures of the Greeks and the “barbarians” – i.e. those speaking languages incomprehensible to Hellenes. Greek culture was not theocratic (there was no reason to be), which is why knowledge was a public good and also right. The initiation into the mysteries was part of the devotional process, but the role of religion was completely different.

The Hellenes used the archaic alphabet for instrumentation and Ionic letters for the song.(d) This may also indicate that instrumental notation preceded the vocal. Obviously the latter became necessary because of music’s further development, thereby varying the melodic lines of voices and instruments.

(d) The idea was later adopted by Byzantines and West Europeans alike (except the Italian school) designating the musical notes with the initial letters of the alphabet: πΑ, Βου, Γα, Δι, κΕ, Ζω, νΗ, and Α, Β, C, D, E, F, G, instead of the Italian terms Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si – a terminology also used in Modern Greece, as if local musical theory never existed…

Thus we are able to play even now the extant ancient Hellenic music “remnants” – of course, approximately. That’s how – based on various indications – we also approach ancient Greek phonology, speech, pronunciation, which was musical and not dynamic as it is now.(e) The difference is enormous. This implies that the divergence between ancient and modern music is even greater.

(e) Contrary to Modern Greek, ancient Hellenic had a musical accent, which means that the accented syllable was not uttered with a stronger voice but at a higher pitch than the rest. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that this interval was not just one or two tones, as we would imagine, but more or less similar to that of a fifth in music (e.g. Re–La)! Don’t forget that the acute, circumflex, and grave accents also implied different pronunciation in ancient Hellenic.

The arguable continuity of Greek civilization through the succession of classical antiquity with the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods – and the necessary adjustments at each stage due to changing conditions – seems to have been interrupted by the arrival of the Ottomans. So, we tend to identify the emergence of any divergence during this period. But such phenomena have been much older, as the rapid linguistic changes taking place already in the Hellenistic period show. As far as music is concerned, colossal differentiations emerged much later, not because of the Turkish yoke, but – how ironic! – as soon as this yoke was thrown off and the Modern Greek state was established supported on foreign “crutches”.

A rule that was undermined then from above concerned the link between folk and erudite music. The fact that Constantinople, Thessalonica and Smyrna – the great centres of the Byzantine and Ottoman eras – were outside the borders of the new state made things easier for the erudite musicians (all of them educated in Europe) to impose the music they could play and compose, regardless if it had nothing to do with local tradition.

Additionally, due to the fact that this tradition was shared with the former conqueror, a new kind of servitude that appeared since then also led to attempts to “harmonize” (based on the Occidental conception of harmony; see our previous Voyage) Hellenic music, both demotic song and ecclesiastical Byzantine chant. The latter was the only erudite music left in Greece, since secular Byzantine music was thoughtlessly ceded to Turkey without Hellas claiming its share of this centuries-old cultural heritage…

Didn’t those in power realize that there was a risk for the people to turn into tabula rasa? Didn’t they wonder if among the ages thrown into the dustbin the… Periclean Golden Age was also included? No problem! They bathed in the spotlight just the Parthenons (that is, the dead meaning of the Golden Age), then set up the “new Parthenons” on barren islands of exile,(f) and finally set out to strangle whatever little had survived from Pericles’ legacy with the asphyxiating embrace of concrete. The architectural chaos they’ve created may have knocked architecture down the podium of the fine arts, but that’s what business with pleasure is all about – and this combination is better achieved through… defects: it’s them that turn wallets thick!

The Europeanization of music has been going on apace all along as long as training provided in conservatories (aka… foreign music language schools) is based on European standards.(g) The absence of “national” music education at its place of birth (while “third world” countries of the Orient boast of their higher music institutes) might be unthinkable in any country other than modern Greece. Perhaps everything can be explained by amateurism or the absence of a cultural policy – without excluding the possibility of conscious action. After all, isn’t this absence of policy also… a policy?

(g) A conservatoire is called odeon in Greek. However, the ancient Hellenic odeon was not meant for music lessons but for musical shows, singing exercises, music and poetry competitions, and the like. The odeons were similar to ancient Greek theatres, but were far smaller and also provided with a roof for acoustic purposes. Regarding the conservatory, the term is definitely… unmusical as it also refers to conservatism, greenhouses, and preservatives!

The issue is far from simple. Any child inclined to music, regardless of stimuli, will be obliged to attend a conservatory having no choice: he/she will necessarily be taught a foreign musical language – the erudite European. It’s been another case of brainwashing – not only of this child but also of his/her future listeners, since it is impossible to “shepherd” the public to listen to occidental music if no one “produces” musicians specifically trained for the role, blocking the procedures of the formation of new traditional musicians, and marginalizing at the same time those who are already active. It’s been another scheme of the ruling circles in order to eradicate local traditional music and thus mutate the collective consciousness of the people.

The ruling circles tried to eradicate local tradition and mutate the collective consciousness of the people. Those who resisted were the conservatives…

Taking into account all these attempts, the continuous attacks against all local musical genres since the Hellenic state has been established, it is a miracle that this tradition has survived! It’s been victorious, of course, because it’s deep-rooted – but also because of a certain peculiarity: there was resistance against these attacks and those who resisted were mainly the conservative opponents of cosmopolitanism (e.g. Simon Karas, though sponsored by the Ford Foundation) and not the progressive Greeks, as it would be proper and normal. The fact that it was the conservatives who contributed the most in the field of safeguarding traditional music created even more confusion, obscuring the real problems.

The conservatives, of course, care about the conservation of music in the form it has survived through tradition so far. They are mainly interested in the conservation of the type (sum of typical features or clichés) of tradition, which is not seen in connection with the rest of the Mediterranean cultures where it belongs. It is the typical attitude of the folklorists missing the whole point. So they concentrate their attention on collecting songs and tunes in the form they’ve been polished to perfection by countless generations of musicians, disregarding personal creative interventions by current folk artists, ignoring that such innovations – those adopted by public taste – refined and perfected folk songs, and also rejecting any further similar effort as an attempt to adulterate their purity, arguing that in the era of individualism, the practice of collective development of music is long gone.

This may be true; but disregards the fact that the songs we admire so much have been created and perfected not by the people in general, but by their musicians as exponents of society at large or some social strata. That is, their composers and lyricists have been some talented persons, not society in general. In addition, we have no right to throw the inflow of new elements into our music in the purgatory, condemning it to a standstill – which is equivalent to death: τὰ πάντα ῥεῖ (everything flows), said Heraclitus; therefore, whatever does not flow, dies out. It goes without saying that I do not argue in favour of an uncritical acceptance of all new elements. I just point out the consequences of blind negativism: by cutting the thread of continuity, we offer the worst service to tradition. Are our folklorists under the naïve impression that barricading themselves behind the wall they are erecting, they would supposedly be safe? In the Internet era they behave like ostriches!

Folk songs have been created and perfected not by the people in general,
but by their musicians as exponents of society or some social strata.
Their creators have been some talented persons, not society in general.
In the era of individual creation, only a thorough understanding
of traditional music will enable its further development…

There’s no objection that after the invention of the phonograph, and especially since the record companies have also undertaken the promotion of their “merchandise”, the role of the people shrank into that of a passive receiver-listener. So much for the famous public taste! Thus, in the era of individual creation, only a thorough understanding of traditional music will enable its further development under new conditions – which is the hoped-for result – instead of serving as couleur locale. This development, of course, cannot come up with revivals such as the “neo-demotic” or “neo-rebetiko” that discredit the whole verbiage about “roots”, precisely because of the adherence of their protagonists to the past – if not to money…

AUTODIDACTS OR SCHOOLED?

“IF I CANNOT CHANGE A SITUATION, I accept it,”B.B. King confessed, clarifying the reason why this great bluesman changed the style of his music.(h) His statement raises openly the problem of accepting whatever situation or not, whether one can create obeying to the dictates of companies – or of the public, that is already a conditioned element. Certainly, the room for creation becomes more limited. Even those who can cope with difficulties would produce far more important work if they had a free hand. Those who manage not to debase their art under such strict control are really few. That’s why the ethos of music is already a concept unknown to musicians – something so hard to get that we are under the illusion we can find it among amateurs…

(h)Thelonious Monk, the outstanding jazz pianist and composer, advises exactly the opposite: “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them 15, 20 years.”

Well, professionals or amateurs? It’s an issue we need to elaborate on because, in the field of the arts, the former are burdened with all the sins of the world (plus the junk that’s for sale), while no one dares to call into question the noble intentions of those enveloped in the halo of an “art lover”. This mentality has already spread even to professionals! We have arrived at the point where we… boast of our amateurism, considering professionalism as hubris in the land of the Homeric epics, the work of a professionalrhapsode, where the equally professionalbards of the Odyssey era (sometime between 1250 and 1170) are mentioned, namely Phemius and Demodocus. We are talking about a tradition we know for sure it’s been going on for at least three millennia – let alone that professional musicians existed well before the fall of Troy.

So, what is a professional? Generally speaking on any kind of work, since the situation around music is rather confusing, we can say that he/she is someone who:

a) knows how to do a job – has been specially trained, or skilled as an apprentice of an older artisan – and
b) out of this job he/she can at least make a living.

Three Musicians, by Picasso

Anyone who does not meet the above requirements cannot be considered a professional and, moreover, if he/she doesn’t meet the first requirement, it’s impossible to get a job (under normal conditions). There are, of course, good and bad professionals depending on the degree they can meet such requirements. A good professional, therefore, is one who cares for both the material he’s working on, and the material aspect of his work – his earnings – because otherwise his craftsmanship would be degraded and anyone could replace him. Bertolt Brecht talked about this need in his time, but who listened to him then and who remembers him now? “When you have something to say, to express,” said Pablo Picasso, “any submission becomes unbearable in the long run. One must have the courage of one’s vocation and the courage to make a living from one’s vocation… without compromise.”

The denigration of the professional musician may be linked to the Europeanization epidemic that’s been sweeping the Hellenic state since its establishment. Ionian and Athenian serenades, operettas, various retros, and European light music in general, has been the “scope of action par excellence” of the trained Europeanist super-professionals,(i) while local tradition has been left in the care of semi-professional or even amateur, self-taught musicians, treated disparagingly by the music establishment.

(i) It is striking that music which is described as… “lightweight”, superficially sentimental, and of a petty bourgeois character, is found only in the Occident after the so-called “Commercial Revolution” that commercialized everything – even the arts. The one found in the Mediterranean is imitation! Traditional musicians, when playing such pieces, characterize them as “European”, even if they have Greek lyrics or composers…

Here’s the “root of evil”: at best the state has abandoned local music to the mercy of fate; at worst it’s been hostile against it. Several posts – public or not – were surely occupied by these Europeanists. Under the circumstances, Hellenic music and its practitioners barely survived. They were obliged to do other jobs to survive – at the expense, of course, of their art that was degraded more and more, along with public taste. This profession “offered” so much insecurity that the locals (throughout the Balkans) handed it over to the “exclusive competence” of the Roma, the gypsies.

Politakia, later Smyrnaic Estudiantina: the first estudiantina founded in Smyrna in 1898 by the Constantinopolitans Basilios Sideres and Aristides Peristeres.

The situation definitely improved when and where the Greeks gained economic prosperity that allowed them to support “full time” musicians. But the dramatic improvement of the conditions of Hellenic music came with a… tragedy: the Asia MinorCatastrophe. History shows us again and again how much she can appreciate irony! Those uprooted from their ancestral homes moved in thousands into Greece (around 1.3 million people) and, together with their scanty belongings, carried with them the Anatolian sound and lifestyle – which evolved into a struggle to survive in Hellas: they brought their songs and feasts, just in case they could alleviate their plight…

The dramatic improvement of the conditions of Hellenic music came with a… tragedy: the Asia Minor Catastrophe.

The Anatolian musicians were truly professionals, with excellent knowledge of both the Mediterranean and European traditions. But they were refugees – thus, on the margins. It would take some time until they occupied responsible positions in the newly founded phonographic companies. Until then – as far as their equally marginalized public was still there – they would keep on playing their familiar repertoire of Constantinople, Smyrna and Asia Minor at large, with songs and tunes that enjoyed widespread approval in Anatolia; but not in Greece where they were not universally embraced, were rather limited in scope, for their sound was “unfamiliar” – let alone they were difficult to sing! So their fate was similar to that of their creators and they were in turn marginalized. Another historical irony was that they were replaced by the songs of the hitherto marginalizedPiraeoticrebetiko!

The reasons for this preference, therefore, were commercial – as well as political: these elaborate, demanding songs, as artistic products of an advanced culture, were reminiscent of lost homelands. So they should be removed from collective memory to – supposedly – “heal” the trauma of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Firm was the belief that this music was inextricably linked with the Turkish language spoken by many refugees. National interest dictated some drastic measures to be taken.

The Smyrnaic songs, reminiscent of lost homelands, were marginalized for commercial and political reasons. They should be removed from collective memory to “heal” the trauma of the catastrophe… Censorship on music targeted minor thirds, a feature of the ancient Hellenic chromatic genus…

This task was later taken over by the Metaxasdictatorship, imposing censorship that was not limited to lyrics, but extended to music, as well (see also Voyage 6). The musical censors’ main target was the minor third intervals (three semitones), the so-called “bemolli”,(j) that is, the distinctive feature of the ancient Hellenic chromatic genus. Even though there are some questions around the enharmonic genus, no one has ever doubted about the chromatic: we know e.g. that it was never used in tragedies – apparently because it did not fit there. But Plutarch, according to Aristides Quintilianus (3rd century CE), said that “the cithara, several generations older than tragedy, since its very beginning, used… the sweetest and most plaintive” chromatic genus. Besides, the three ancient genera (diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic) can also be found, noticeably remodeled, in Byzantine music. However, the Westerners – alas! – are only able to appreciate scales, especially the diatonic, while their chromatic scale has nothing to do with the chromatic genus: bingo!

(j) “In 1936 when they first imposed censorship on the songs, they ‘corrected’ the melodies of popular songs removing the ‘oriental’ elements in an effort to ‘cleanse’ popular music. Their aim was various external features of the melody, primarily minor thirds or ‘bemolli’, according to the musicians’ popular parlance.” (Giorgos Papadakis, Folk Self-Taught Musicians).
As Basiles Tsitsanes confessed in an interview with G. Papadakis: “With censorship at that time… we took away the bemolli. Bambakares for instance wrote: ‘Every evening I bwill wait bfor you, girl…’ We would change that mark and turn it withoutbemolso as not to sound oriental… We wrote beautiful serenades at that time…”(!).

Tsitsanes Tavern, Thessalonica

“How comes that no one informed Metaxas on this issue?”, – some naïve person may wonder. Well, even if someone did, he would have… disappeared later imprisoned or exiled for “anti-state activities”! Under these abnormal conditions rebetiko turned professional. Persecution affected everyone – both the Anatolians and the locals – for their music styles were first-degree relatives. Due to its tolerant police authority, Thessalonica was then turned into an oasis where many persecuted found refuge. Thus, during its early years, rebetiko influenced the city and was influenced by it.

Anyway, the painful shrinkage of Hellenism had also its positive effects, concentrating and condensing in modern Greece sounds born in three peninsulas: the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Italy. No country in the region enjoys such a privilege: its geography determines the sound of its music. This little miracle, however, with Hellenism’s three-dimensional face, collides with the mantra “We belong to the West” and is anything but welcome to the rulers who would do everything for the people to lose orientation – and if possible, they would have imposed… “occidentation” with a presidential decree!

The shrinkage of Hellenism concentrated in Greece sounds born
in three peninsulas: the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Italy.
Rebetiko’s foes covered the entire political spectrum from Right to Left.

Rebetiko’s foes, however, covered the entire political spectrum from Right to Left. In the late ’46 and early ’47, according to Phoebus Anogianakis, the musical associations asked the government to intervene taking “appropriate measures” in order to stem the spread of rebetiko:

“This initiative,” he wrote in Rizospastis, the Communist Party newspaper, on January 28, 1947, “was gradually embraced by our music critics and columnists who, in their discussions and articles, grappled with its ‘moral’ and artistic value, as well as with its effect especially on the younger generation. [Another reincarnation of the ephori!]

“Anathemas ‘in the name’ of morality at risk, or an offhand evaluation of popular rebetiko song as it is presented – mind you – in the cosmopolitan tavern, prevented a critical assessment of rebetiko creating fuss and confusion.

“The criteria of our Western music education are certainly not enough to approach and study rebetiko, especially when they are accompanied by the ‘current’ perception of morality. Many aspects of this song naturally surprise us. We have strayed away so far from its sources following our own paths that sometimes we can find ourselves with difficulty.

“The tradition of demotic song and, to a somewhat lesser extent, of Byzantine music, even though some would be surprised, continues in these songs that constitute a genuine form of today’s popular music.”

A week later, on February 4, Rizospastis published a reply letter to Anogianakis, signed by his co-fighter in the ranks of the National Liberation Front (EAM), namely Alekos Xenos, also a musician. Noting that in the newspaper Ethnos (Nation), the composer Manoles Kalomoires adopted a similar position with Anogianakis (this concurrence seemed rather… incriminating!), he outlined his diametrically opposite view:

“Rebetiko,” he wrote, “is one of the inherent contradictions of the bourgeoisie in decline. It appears in an embryonic form before the wars. It takes shape from melodic remnants of the Turkish conquerors and those melodies brought here by ship crews coming from Turkish ports. It is performed by the most lumpen strata created by the pauperizing economic tactics of capitalism.(k) It carries the most reactionary traditions, in the degradation of a segment of the bourgeoisie.

(k)Lumpen (rags in German): a ragamuffin and, by extension, every impoverished element. In Marxist theory it is combined with the word proletariat to signify the most impoverished segments of the working class having no class consciousness. Proletarius in ancient Rome was someone totally destitute who could not give the state anything but his children (proles = child). Under capitalism it is the one who cannot give the capitalist anything but his labour power.

“I think that we cannot find ourselves going back to rebetiko but to the few songs of our people’s latest Resistance and those that will be composed about it in the future.”

This fossilized thinking, which the party leadership – unfortunately – espoused, was disputed on the 23rd of the same month by Linos Polites with another letter to Rizospastis. After calling Xenos back to… Marxist order (“how comes that the lumpen is a degraded segment of the bourgeoisie?”), he censured the domestic production of tangos, concluding as follows:

“I cannot believe that A. Xenos accepts there is popular tradition and style in the music of the songs of Resistance since we know both their composers – he is one of them –(l) and the clearly Western measures in the structures of their compositions. In addition, we know that during such a short time, individual creation can far easier give its fruits.

(l) The Anthem of EPON (United Panhellenic Organization of Youth), on lyrics by Sophia Mavroeides-Papadakis (“With the golden armour of youth…”), was initially performed in the 1st Panthessalian Congress of EPON with music composed by Xenos, while in Athens it was sung with music by Anogianakis – just to mention a characteristic example…

“Today, after the great lesson of the Resistance, the gap that separates us in matters of art from the people became more than obvious and there is a clear need to find a point of contact. This point will be found in contemporary popular activities, if we examine them with less superficiality and more serious characterizations.”

Manos Hadjidakis

Then the controversy around rebetiko necessarily stopped, since another conflict had broken out – with live ammunition: it was the Civil War… Two years later, with the Left heading for defeat because of their own “mistakes” and betrayals (not because of the superior adversary firepower), another composer, also coming from the ranks of EAM but disappointed and having turned his interests elsewhere, undertook the defense of rebetiko. It was the highly penetrating Manos Hadjidakis describing the prevailing atmosphere in the late 40s:

“Our times are hard and our popular song, which is not made by people of the fugue and counterpoint who care for sanitation and make-do health make-up, sings the truth and nothing but the truth.

“Our era is neither heroic nor epic and the end of the 2nd World War left almost all the problems unresolved and up in the air.

“Furthermore, our country follows through with a war, almost uninterruptedly, with perseverance and faith in the final victory, but always – especially today – arduously and painfully. Consider now under these relentless conditions the virginal idiosyncrasy of our people. Virginal because just one hundred years of free life were not able neither to make it mature nor to leave room for the latest European trends to take root. Imagine all this piled vitality and beauty at the same time of a people like ours asking for an outlet, expression, contact with the outside world and facing everything mentioned above as main features of the era. Moreover, think of the extremely harsh conditions in our country. Vitality is burned, idiosyncrasy falls sick, beauty remains. This is rebetiko. And hence its thematology arises.

“Imagine all this piled vitality and beauty of a people asking for an outlet, expression, contact with the outside world… Think of the extremely harsh conditions in our country. Vitality is burned, idiosyncrasy falls sick, beauty remains. This is rebetiko.” (Manos Hadjidakis)

The Era of Mélisande takes us to this period that “is neither heroic nor epic”.

“Rebetiko manages to combine speech, music and movement in an admirable unity. From composition to interpretation, the conditions are instinctively created for this triple expressive coexistence that sometimes, when it reaches the limits of perfection, is morphologically reminiscent of ancient tragedy.

“Zeibekikois the purest modern Greek rhythm; whilehasapikohas assimilated a pure Hellenic peculiarity. Rebetiko is built on these rhythms; observing the melodic line of the song we can clearly discern the influence or, better, the extension of Byzantine chant. Not just examining the scales that out of folk musicians’ instinct are kept intact, but also observing the cadences, intervals and mode of execution. Everything reveals the source, which is none other than the strict and austere ecclesiastic hymn.

“Who knows what new life the leisurely and pessimistic 9/8 hold for us in the future. But, in the meantime, we would have felt their strength for good. We will hear them, very naturally and properly, raising their voice in our immediate surroundings and living in order to interpret our inner selves”…

Until the Civil War wounds healed up, many years had passed. The debate on rebetiko was rekindled in the dawn of the 60s on the occasion of Mikis Theodorakis’ Epitaph. But it was too late: the debate of the 60s seemed more like a… rebetiko epitaph – meaning it was post mortem – for its creative period, its breath, was already over…

Dinos Christianópoulos

“Persistent were the attacks on rebetiko, even after it was dead for years,”Dinos Christianópoulos comments. “Hostile attitude was maintained by nationalists and governments (especially by Metaxas and somehow more moderately by the Tsaldares government, that outlawed and persecuted it), considering it as a stigma of Greco-Christian culture;(m) religious organizations and the Church in general, that dealt with it as immoral; the fanatic communists (among them even Várnales, although he frequented in taverns), who rejected it as an expression of bourgeois decay and decadence; a part of the bourgeois press, expressing the prejudice and respectability of high society; demotic song fans (mainly schoolteachers and provincial scholars); the conservatories people, who faced it with disgust and contempt; university folklorists, who considered it as an abortion of our popular culture, and a lot of little folks emasculated by light songs.”

Noteworthy is an essay by Kostas Takhtsés on Zeybekiko – written with y because of a theory “that the etymology of the word comes fromZeusand bekos (bread in Phrygian)”. This elaborate text of 1964, rather lengthy to quote here, deserves to be read in whole, inter alia, for its important reflections, such as:

Kostas Takhtsés

“Contrary to classical Hellenic culture that modern Greeks aspired to resurrect after the War of Independence in mainland Hellas, the Byzantine world was clearly ‘oriental’. The Turks borrowed and imitated this ‘oriental’ civilization, giving to it, over time, a heavier, Turkish character, and exactly this secondary product was what generations of Greeks of servitude experienced, and brought with them when they came, as refugees, to old Hellas.”

“The guerrillas of ELAS (Greek People’s Liberation Army)”, Tachtsís also wrote referring to the years of Resistance, dissolving the embellished picture Xenos tried to create, “along with some demotic songs, depending on the area, sang Hellenized versions of Russian, and – how tragicomic! – even… German songs and paeans.”

Anyway, it is really didactic to see in outline the distressing finale of the story about rebetiko zeybekiko as narrated by Takhtsés:

“The bourgeois resisted; but they soon realized the futility of the effort. Thus, using the well-known method of rationalization or the equally well-known tactics of neutralization through containment, they embraced, adopted [the zeybekiko songs]. It’s always the best way to castrate a ‘revolution’ – cheap, safe, and bloodless. They started going on nightly treks to various taverns with bouzouki bands, the menu prices went up, the bouzouki players showed off, were flattered, saw that they had discovered a goldmine, buttoned up, even wore tuxedos, started varying their repertoire ever more with the softer, empty of any message or thought, but more tantalizing,tsifteteli, the prices went up again, the simple people got scared, withdrew to unknown taverns with still unknown bands, the eccentrics and the bourgeois discovered them, they occupied the tables there, as well, until the people, finding no place to sit, were compelled to gather outside, staring at the bands, the Americans and the bourgeois, in order to listen to the songs that were born out of them, but were far too expensive for their pockets. Thus a paranoid situation prevailed with the tourists and the bourgeois who went to see the people, and the people who went to see the tourists. Admiring products of economic misery that they were not willing to share except only aesthetically and from afar, the tourists flattered the people, for whom they became both a spectacle and objects of wonder.

“Well: with the collaboration of some well-meaning, and many dishonest or foolish people, an amazing robbery has taken place before our eyes: the people’s right to lament, at least, their fate. The zeybekiko songs have become the status quo, established themselves, lost their edge, their meaning, and have become, in turn, the Occupation tangos of our time. More Greek, of course, than the tangos but, mind you, they speak no more of social injustice, nor about the bitterness in life, they don’t protest, they consent. They speak about bourgeois pseudo-pleasures and pseudo-worries, and now and then about the bitterness of migration, which is absolutely crucial, since migration means not to face reality, but to flee from it – the only kind of flight that is still allowed, when it’s not imposed.

“Let me conclude: Those songs that managed for a while to become the means of expression of a people’s protest against their exploiters of all kinds, are now composed according to ‘plutocratic’ methods of mass production by the exploiters themselves, or they are just financed by them, for consumption by the people, and the people, who do not understand, or pretend not to understand, who have had some food to eat after the war, and, because of this little food, imagined they’ve become rich – sing them!

“I am somehow fit to judge the aesthetic result of all this unprecedented farce; and it’s lamentable”…

After such a text, silence is golden. Even D.E. Pohren’s crucial conclusion that “once a minority’s authentic musical expression becomes fashionable, it fades”, pales into insignificance. The same applies to Anogianakis’ remark that “certain current [1961] rebetiko features correspond to commercial jazz (stylized overproduction, exaggerated performance through microphones and loudspeakers, showing off of silly virtuosity).”

Here’s, then, where we have ended up: with musicians playing every night, all the time, the same repertoire with no substantial changes, bored as hell, just like their customers. When the musicians do not enjoy their art, when pathos or joys of life have been replaced by bathos or superficial revels, then merriment and “happiness” come by artificial means – drinking at best. When the musicians fail to engage creatively and freely in improvisations, having in mind just an outline, a sketch of the repertoire, leaving everything else on the spur of the moment, when they avoid or are afraid to be carried away by their imagination, and prefer to be on sure ground, then at best they may provide entertainment – for the people to forget their troubles, to be fooled away – though they should provide (at least sometimes) edutainment, “soul therapy”.(n) When the musicians act dictatorially, playing at full volume, forgetting that music has pianissimo and fortissimo, as well as a plethora of modes and rhythms, then people go out to blow off some steam, get drunk and break loose, making more noise than the amplifiers and behaving like a horde of barbarians. Then – let me say it again – the musicians have lost their best allies: the music aficionados.

(n)Edutainment (edu-cation + enter-tainment) is so weak and pale compared to the Greek ψυχαγωγία (αγωγή ψυχής = soul leading or training, education of the soul) – but what can I do? (See also Voyage 6)

But – you’re bound to ask – aren’t professionals like that? Why should I support them? Well, these are the bad professionals, I would say – regardless if they make up the majority now. Willy-nilly, they’ve fallen into the trap where other professionals, such as journalists, have also been caught, with the idea that they are… coffee men and, therefore, they make coffee according to the customers’ preferences!(o) They do not seem to bother that the order for… “light-sweet” music or news is not given by some “clients” but by their bosses. On the other hand, let’s not forget that if there was no public well-disposed to junk “music” or “news”, the bosses would necessarily have second thoughts. So, when we… shoot the piano player without looking in the mirror, chances are we’ll be finally left without a piano player!

(o) That was a publisher’s basic argument of defense in the trial of some journalists for violating a draconian Press Law…

When we shoot the piano player without looking in the mirror,
chances are we’ll be finally left without a piano player!

Music is no joking matter. It’s an art requiring years of study, either with sheet music and books or next to another musician – but always on the instrument. It takes persistent and consistent effort and study to master the technique of a single instrument and, moreover, to decipher the secrets of a single musical language. The same applies to a singer: not everything depends on a “celestial charisma”. How then is it possible to consider this verbiage of “cold” professionals and “sensitive” amateurs as well-grounded? How can a lyricist e.g. pose as a composer when he is musically “illiterate”? What would this rhymer say, indeed, if someone who had never sat down to work on language and metre declared to be a “poet”? You’ll tell me I’ve forgotten a very important parameter: in Hellas you are whatever you declare!

Popular songs – they say – are simple. Yes, but they are not simplistic! The great difficulty in their composition lies in this very simplicity. Especially when you have studied theory of music, it is rather easy to create complicated compositions. If you attempt to simplify them, if you leave just the basic melodic line, then the substance, the quality of your inspiration, reveals itself.

Popular songs – they say – are simple. Yes, but they are not simplistic!
The great difficulty in their composition lies in this very simplicity…

Let us assume that divine inspiration strikes a musically “illiterate”: he will not be able to elaborate on that because he lacks proper knowledge. And if this elaboration is taken over by someone else, the end result will be different from what he had in mind. Even if he “hits it big” and becomes a “star”, he will have capitalized on the erudition of third persons who will unfortunately, in most cases, remain unknown. Additionally, if he wishes to sing his creation, as it has become fashionable lately, he will fail, as well, because, even if he doesn’t sing out of tune (if…), he has not worked his vocal chords, ignores completely the vocal techniques, he doesn’t know the secrets of breathing, articulating and singing, and much more.

One may refer as an example to the Beatles who composed brilliant music being musically “illiterate”. Apart from the fact that they too capitalized on George Martin’s erudition, I have to stress I don’t mean by any means those musicians who are theoretically “illiterate”: the Beatles were professional musicians since the time they played – completely unknown – in Hamburg.

Mind you, the autodidacts, or self-taught musicians, have not only disadvantages but also advantages against their theoretically erudite colleagues. Let alone that the conservatory may destroy a natural talent. Liszt e.g. admired so much a self-taught virtuoso that “he trembled at the idea of him studying music, so as to keep the impulsive power of his musical instinct virginal and unchanged”, as Sophia Spanoudes wrote in her well-known column in favour of Tsitsanes in 1952. Speaking about the extraordinary advantages of autodidacts against erudite artists, Giorgos Papadakis explained why such musicians have been the salt of the earth:

Liszt “trembled at the idea of some self-taught virtuoso studying music,
so as to keep the impulsive power of his musical instinct virginal.”

“A self-taught instrumentalist is obviously required to solve many difficult technical problems alone. He is obliged to improvise solutions to problems already solved, since a teacher or a method would have significantly shortened the time required to do this. So, many times he needs to re-invent the wheel. The price can be high, but he may reap a reward that many musicians would envy: the quite personal style derived from personal improvised ways of addressing technical problems. This is evident in the way of playing of those musicians who learned out of commitment and play with commitment.”

Basiles Tsitsanes on a stamp

The musically “illiterate”, however, are also sly: they declare they are “popular composers”, instead of “popular musicians”, because otherwise the trick would have been exposed at once. So let’s have a brief look at this category, as well:

“The popular composer”, according to Phoebus Anogianakis:“a) is an uneducated person endowed by nature with musical gifts, someone who has not studied music (whatever knowledge he has is due to his extensive experience as a professional, especially in recent years, because of his contact-collaboration with musicians of light music);“b) ‘composes’ mainly songs or short instrumental pieces (of a dance or free rhythmical type) usually with the help of a popular instrument;“c) ‘bases’ his work on Greek popular music tradition, while at the same time being under some influence (from foreign popular music or also – in recent years – from local or foreign popular-like art light music).”

It goes without saying that a popular composer according to Anogianakis needs to combine the traits of a self-taught musician according to Papadakis if he is to acquire a quite personal style – and vice versa: the autodidact must be gifted by nature with musical talents and have extensive experience to re-invent the wheel…

One more thing: the term “art music”, prevailing in the 60s when Anogianakis’ text was written, is of course completely inappropriate, since it implies that a popular composer is probably… “artless”! Clearly annoyed and in a sarcastic mood, Tsitsanes once commented that the difference between popular and “art” composers is that between eyewitnesses to a crime and some others who… just heard about it!

And what about the… “illiterate”? Where can we group all those who surely have nothing in common with either Tsitsanes or the Beatles? No need to ask: they are the… perpetrators of the crime!

AN APOPHTHEGM such as the above by the famous historian and geographer on the prevailing opinion in his time (64 BCE – 24 CE) about the Thracian and Asian origin of all music – hence also its instruments – actually recurs again and again like a leitmotiv and also as a reminder to all those who start from the Thracian Orpheus’ lyre and end up to General Makryiannes’ tambourás…

“In Tsakoniá one comes upon the most ancient Tsakonian dance that is characterized by its Apollonianpaeonicrhythm of five beats, the snake-like cycling, circling, folding and unfolding of the dance company, with their coryphaeus [leader] dancing around them and sometimes opposite the second dancer, reminding us of a Pythic nomos [Pythian law or canon] of dance and music (Apollo’s battle against Python),(a) and not of Theseus and Ariadne’s imaginary threads, as it is usually proclaimed thoughtlessly and irresponsibly by Athenian dance companies.”

(a)Nomos was the most important type of musical composition and interpretation in ancient Hellas. The Pythian or Pythic nomos, played on the homonymous aulos, was created by Sakadas and won him the first prize of auletic art in the Pythian Games in 586 BCE. His aim was to describe the battle between Apollo and Python. Thus, it’s been the first known example of program music – the one describing a theme, in contrast with the absolute or abstract or pure music (see also Chronicle 1: SAILING AROUND PERIPLUS).

Simon Karas

As long as one is preoccupied with the ancients’ exaltation, that is, as long as he is just a… carrier of the “virus”, there is no big problem. What happens, however, if he becomes symptomatic and possessed by “ancestor-mania”? The result is more than obvious in the above citation from a text on a record with Songs of the Peloponnese, issued by the Society for the Dissemination of National Music, and written by Simon Karas himself – despite his admittedly immense and invaluable contribution on this subject.

Such were the claims put forward in all seriousness from both sides, as if it mattered much whether the Tsakonian dance reminded us of a Pythic nomos or if it reenacted, faithfully or not, the escape from the Labyrinth, while the… Minotaur was anything but dead, and Karas pointed his finger at him immediately afterwards:

“In the once resounding with musical instruments Peloponnese”, he complained, “you have a problem if you try to find musical instruments worthy of their names. Much labour and effort was needed on our part in order to find aclarino [folk clarinet], a violin, or alaouto [folk lute] in entire prefectures, and on many occasions to transport musicians many kilometres away so that they could match with others and form a company.”

Qanun (psaltery)

This “Pythic nomos” mentality made Karas claim that almost all folk instruments played today or allegedly used in the past in Greece were Hellenic in origin. In a similar text on a record with Songs of Constantinople and the Sea of Marmara, he wrote:

“The psalteryqanuntogether with the ancient Greek and Byzantinethambura [tambur], thanks to the former’s many latches [mandals] and the latter’s many [movable] frets, were the instruments used in the teaching of the theory of musical modes (echoe) and intervals in the past.”

The term psaltery was general in ancient Hellas, had no relation with the religious psalms and referred to all string instruments played directly with the fingers without a plectrum. Included in the same category were, among others, the nabla, simicium and trígonon (harp). As a rule, they were multi-string instruments, some of them not “psalteries” for they were played with a plectrum. The most impressive of the latter was perhaps the sambuca that was more than one metre high and looked like a homonymous siege engine.

Harpist (Trígonon player) of Keros

It seems that the instruments of this numerous family, especially those with many strings, did not differ much – at least for the non-connoisseurs – and thus many people confused them. However, some of them were played upright evolving into the harp, while others were used horizontally and ended up as the qanun and santur. These instruments were known and in use in Greece before it became… Greece, that is, since the (pre-Hellenic) early Bronze Age of the 3rd millennium BCE. The clearest proof is the Harpist (Trígonon player) of Keros, a beautiful Cycladic figurine dating back to 2800-2300 BCE.

Despite these instruments’ long history in the Greek world, Plato and some other philosophers condemned them as unmanly, while Aristotle‘s pupil, Aristoxenus of Tarentum, the so-called Musician, a most important figure in the area of music theory in ancient Hellas, one of the pioneers of musicology, as we would say today, described them as έκφυλα, that is alien – in the word’s literal sense and not the metaphorical that’s been left to us (degenerate).

Of course, what’s interesting here is not a moral evaluation but the origin of these instruments. There is enough evidence, albeit unclear, that seems to point to an Asian or Thracian origin (what Strabo has said). More tangible are the archeological finds with a plethora of depictions of harpists excavated in the Near East – mainly in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Harpist of Keros is unique, but only as an exquisite work of visual art…

The name of a similar instrument called phoenix, originating probably in Phoenicia, points to the same direction. But the mentality peculiar to a good number of Modern Greeks was also widespread in ancient Hellas. Thus, the Delian poet Semus, based on the well-known saying and established notion that “there’s no place like home”, claimed that the phoenix was so called because its arms were constructed of Delian “phoenix” (palm tree in Greek). What we get, indeed, out of this claim is that in his time the islet was not only inhabited and not barren as it is today, but instead covered with vegetation including palm trees!

Epigonion

Based on the same “logic”, it was argued that another multi-string instrument, the epigónion, was so named after its inventor, Epigonus of Ambracia, a musician of the 6th century BCE. It took an expert of musicology such as Curt Sachs to bring forth the apparent etymology of the word (επί = on + γόνυ = knee) as the musician placed the instrument on his/her knee(s).

Qanun, on the other hand, was the name of the monochord, an instrument with just one string, used mostly by music theorists to determine the mathematical relations of sounds (from κανών = rule, in Hellenic), usually called as the Pythagorean qanun, for its invention was attributed to Pythagoras. The great Samian philosopher, mathematician and music theorist of the 6th century BCE, however, before going to the Occident to set up his school in Crotone of Magna Graecia, had travelled around a lot in the Orient and become familiar with the achievements of the Assyro–Babylonians and Egyptians in the above areas.

Pollux, who has instructed us about the origin of the tríchordon (pandura), says now that this simple instrument, the monochord, has been an Arab invention. On his part, Nicomachus of Gerasa, a Pythagorean mathematician and music theorist of the 2nd century CE, writes that the monochord is often called phánduros – that is, pandura. It is not known if the monochord qanun was the starting point of an evolution that led to the tanbur and quanun. But anyway that’s how we have come full circle back to the tríchordon, the ancestor of the thambura and the rest of the lutes with long necks we have already seen (see Voyage 6).

Sailor playing laouto

“Thesantur, a multi-string pectis, is structured on tempered semitones”, Karas goes on… bombarding us while he presents the instruments accompanying the Songs of Constantinople and the Sea of Marmara. “Theoud, a fretless medieval guitar, with its tuning based on the ‘sýstêma ametábolon’ of antiquity (a tone and three or four synêmména tetrachords), shows its Hellenic origin. Thelaouto, an ancient Greek and Byzantine mágadis (its double strings conform to ‘diapason’), is tuned in fifths.”

The fact that the santur is played with tempered intervals in Hellas, as in the rest of Europe – that is, with “alien” and artificial intervals that meet the requirements of European polyphony and not of the Greek “national music” – would at least be expected to frustrate Karas. But he’s just passed by… Note that in the instrument’s cradle, Iran, the so-called “100-string” santur is tuned according to the intervals of the modes to be played.(b)

The pectis and mágadis, which Karas identified with the santur and laouto respectively, were two similar multi-string psalteries of Lydian or Thracian origin. If we trust Aristoxenus, “they were one and the same instrument”. They said that the first musician to use the pectis was the LesbianSappho (around 630-570 BCE). Living in the 4th century BCE, in the same culture that had brought forth these instruments, Aristoxenus had the reliable information, but also the “legitimate right”, to identify these instruments. Where did Karas of the 20th century CE find this right? He obviously acted arbitrarily trying to defend Hellas’ “national interest”!

For the same reasons – that is, in order to demonstrate the “unbroken continuity” between ancient and modern Greece – Karas identified the oud with the medieval guitar. The Asian (Assyrian) cithara (kithara) is already known to us together with its genealogical tree (see Voyage 4). The sad truth is that, in the sense that Karas wished for, neither the cithara-guitar nor the oud or laouto were Hellenic. The latter, in fact, etymologically and organologically, comes from the Arabic oud (al oud > laoud) – which in turn also originates in Persia…

Claiming that this instrument had a Greek character (and denying that this character had been Arabo-Persian), Karas invoked its “tuning based on the ‘sýstêma ametábolon’ with synêmména tetrachords”(c) – presenting the reader with something impressively grandiose and sufficiently incomprehensible! Personally, I think that these systems confuse, rather than enlighten, the ordinary music lovers. So I suggest that we pass them by. But the same does not apply to diapason.

(c) The tetrachords of the sýstêma téleion ametábolon can be either synêmména (attached) or diezeugmena (“divorced”, detached).

Mágadis-pectis

The mágadis, as well as other multi-string instruments, had its strings in double courses tuned in octaves (e.g. RE-re) that the ancients called “διὰ πασῶν” (diá pasôn). The verb “μαγαδίζειν” (mágadis style) denoted a technique of playing a melody in octaves. This is the way the Arabs play the qanun nowadays. According to some writers, the term mágadis (which also defined a kind of aulos) came from the word magás, meaning the bridge of a string instrument. The historian Duris, however, attributed it to a Thracian musician called Magdis.

The ancient Hellenic musical term diapason is just one of all those the Westerners adopted to develop and give prestige to their music. Once the delightful daughter of the Muses, the Greek Μουσική, became… cosmopolitan passing to most languages of the world, it was natural that she would be accompanied by her terminology – but with the original meaning of the terms altered more or less. A well-known “victim” of this adoption is harmony. Consulting a musical dictionary you are about to read:

“Harmony: two or more notes sounding together; the vertical dimension of music. It appears around the 9th century CE, when we have the first polyphonic compositions. Until then music is monophonic, that is, based on a melody with no harmony at all…”!(d)

(d) It should have been written “three or more notes”, because if only two notes sound together, there’s “no [Occidental] harmony at all”! The human beings e.g. have always sung “mágadis style”, in octaves, because men’s voices sound in a lower register than those of women and children. Even if it is monophony, it’s still “two notes sounding together” (heterophony). The same happens in the case of a drone or ison. Note that the traditional polyphony in Europe, Africa and Oceania is undoubtedly older than the erudite West European polyphony.

Dance of the Muses on Mount Helicon to Apollo’s accompaniment, by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1807)

How comes, you wonder, that the ancient Hellenes invented a term for something that they did not have?(!) Searching for an answer, you conclude that harmony for them was any of the several arrangements of notes within an octave, in a system where its parts were connected in such a way as to form a perfect whole (hence harmony) – that is, it was the mode, echos, ‘route’, maqam, dastgāh, raga. Thus, harmony in modal music is not about notes sounding together, but refers to the relationship of any note with those that have preceded it and the others that follow, in a system structured dynamically and horizontally rather than statically and vertically.

Harmony for the ancient Hellenes was any arrangement of notes within an octave. In modal music it refers to the relationship of any note with those that have preceded it and the others that follow.Polyphony appears whenever there is no space for microtones.

But not even polyphony originated in the Occident. We have seen that polyphony is nothing unique. Just think of how many kinds of polyphony are still practiced in the area centered on the Balkans e.g. in Epirus and Albania, in Thrace (Greek, Bulgarian or Turkish), also on the Caucasus Caucasus (Georgia and elsewhere in the area), or in Corsica and Sardinia, and far more in other regions of the world. Polyphony appears whenever there is no space for microtones in music. It’s been inconceivable in the Anatolian music due to the diversity of its intervals, but natural in the Epirotic music and any other based on the pentatonic – that is, the most ancient of the scales, with five degrees (instead of seven) and whole tones without semitones.

The term diapason is related to harmony and derives from the phrase “ἡ διὰ πασῶν τῶν χορδῶν συμφωνία” (the accord through all the notes). That is, it was the eighth, “ἡ καλλίστη συμφωνία” (the best accord), according to Aristoxenus. Later on, the term diapason replaced that of harmony. For the Byzantines it was “ἡ διαοκτώ ἢ δι’ ὀγδόης ἁρμονία” (the harmony through the octave). Today diapason is also a tuning fork or any standard pitch used for tuning.

It could certainly be maintained that not even the concept of music remained unchanged – indeed, this development took place in ancient Greek times. Music as a term appeared for the first time in the 5th century BCE in Pindar’s poetry (Olympian Victory Odes and Hymns) and later in Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ Histories. For a long time this term denoted the combined spiritual and mental performance especially in the letters and arts. As Plato says in The Republic, the body needs exercise while the soul needs music. A “narrower” definition of the term was lyric poetry, that is, poetry with music, melos (melody). Besides, at that time poetry without music was unthinkable.

Women musicians, Egypt

The two arts became independent in the 4th century BCE. It was then that the two terms acquired their current meaning. Previously, of course, poetry denoted creation, construction (ποιεῖν = to create, make). With the special meaning of artistic creation it was first used by Simonides of Ceos (6th-5th century); a poet was thought to be a composer of music. The word music was perhaps invented by Lasus of Hermione (6th century), who was among the first artists that combined the qualities of a musician and a musicologist, having dealt with both the art and science of music.

As for the perception of music, there were two schools: the Pythagorean and the Aristoxenian. Pythagoras disapproved of the appraisal of music through the senses (hearing). The merit of this art, he used to say, is because we can perceive it through the intellect (mind). Aristoxenus, on his part, supported a dual scientific principle: on the one hand, he based himself on the sense of hearing to perceive and appraise the pitch, intervals, etc; and on the other hand he relied on the intellect in order to distinguish the mechanisms of sounds.

Cümbüş

After all these “digressions” (which have been, in part, the… purpose of this Voyage), let’s have a look at some instruments with “negative specifications”, according to Karas. Surprisingly he turned against the cümbüş, or “djimbisi”, as he “Hellenized” it, describing it as a “mixobarbarian [half-barbarian] combination of an Occidental banjo, laouto and oud”, and also complained because “it’s been replacing the oud (the medieval, ancient-style guitar)”… But the only Occidental feature on the cümbüş is its soundboard (the metallic soundboard of the banjo). Nevertheless, it makes no big difference the way the sound of an instrument is amplified. Its basic part is the neck and the intervals produced by the fingerboard – and the cümbüş is normally fretless: that is, even subtle changes in pitch are possible, as if we play an oud, or a violin. So why such fury?

Additionally, in another outright arbitrariness in the table of contents on a record with Songs of Thasos, Lemnos and Samothrace, Karas renamed the (distasteful to him) bouzouki to… tambourás. Ironically, the producers of a disc with Cretan songs have done… exactly the opposite for commercial reasons, renaming Stelios Foustalieris’ tambourás, the bulgarí, to bouzouki! Why this masquerade? Is it really possible to safeguard any national character with such… “transvestite” disguise?

Thus, according to Karas, the cümbüş is “mixobarbarian” – which reminds me that in ancient Greece, only one out of the four basic “harmonies” (modes) was Hellenic in origin: the Dorian. Two of them, the Lydian and Phrygian, were “barbarian” by birth (coming from Lydia and Phrygia), while the fourth was… “mixobarbarian”: it was the Mixolydian – created, according to Aristoxenus, by Sappho, from whom the tragedians received it, for the pathos of this harmony was appropriate to their plays. As Plutarch commented: “the mixolydian is pathetic, in harmony with the tragedies”. Let alone the etymological origin of the word cümbüş that, according to some claims, is the… unquestionably ancient Greek symposium!

In ancient Greece only one out of the four basic modes was Hellenic in origin: the Dorian. The Lydian and Phrygian were “barbarian” by birth, while the fourth was… “mixobarbarian” (half-barbarian): it was the Mixolydian.

Psaltery

All the above, however, are “details” when speaking of Karas, whom I was fortunate enough to enjoy at work during the 3rd and – what a pity! – last musicological symposium in Delphi in 1988. I can assure you he was an excellent teacher; a real master, and not… yalanci (fake), such as those “tambourás masters” who might have been his pupils (see Voyage 6). That’s why I insist on my criticism, targeting them rather than him. He’s been indeed a so-called “teacher of the nation” in the field of Greek traditional music – even though this music has never been “national”, as he claimed in the title of his society. It’s absolutely certain that when Karas spoke of “national music”, he did not mean… ethnic! So let’s have a look in brief at the relationship between music and nation.

MUSIC is as old as we are: it’s innate in humans. Nations, on the other hand, appeared somewhat recently in history not in order to fulfill some human inner needs, as music does, but rather for economic and political reasons. I mean, of course, nation states and not ethnicities, which are something different, formed since ancient times, deriving from different human clans and tribes. Therefore, there are no national characteristics in music. Essentially, there is no Hellenic, Turkish, Bulgarian, etc music. When we use national attributes we simply mean that a piece e.g. has Greek lyrics, if it is a song, or that its composer is Greek. In fact, far too many “Hellenic” songs have actually nothing to do with local traditional music genres (they could be described as rock, tango, mambo, etc), no matter if they have Greek lyrics or composers.

There are no national characteristics in music.
Too many “Hellenic” songs have nothing to do with local tradition,
no matter if they have Greek lyrics or composers.
Folk music is not national but ethnic. Erudite music is multinational.

Indian itinerary musician, by Shagufta Mehdi

Folk music is born as an idiom in areas smaller than the present nation states, under conditions of agricultural natural economy – areas which are generally divided among neighbouring nation states (e.g. Thrace is divided into three). The pace of its development, as well as the inflow of outside influence, is determined by the geography of each region. That’s how musical idioms are articulated. A “problem” arises due to the lack of racial “purity” in these areas, as they are inhabited by people of various ethnicities, each one with its own peculiarities, which are gradually digested into a common idiom, though they retain certain autonomy. As we have seen (see Voyage 4), the more the ethnicities, the richer the idioms. Therefore, folk music is not national but ethnic.

Erudite music, on the other hand, has been a collective effort of elite musicians streaming into the metropolises of multinational empires. Because of the involvement of artists from several nationalities or ethnicities, each with another background, this music is mostly multinational (or transnational, but never international). This applies even to the classical music of Europe, although, broadly speaking, national borders had been drawn there before the period of its great acme.

“National schools”, in conclusion, appear much later employing ethnic sound colours but also erudite music forms. Therefore, there is no national character even in “national schools”. A good example is Modest Mussorgsky’s celebrated suitePictures at an Exhibition, one of the masterpieces of Russian “national school”: it was orchestrated in an exemplary fashion by Maurice Ravel, one of the pioneers of French “national school”, and in this form it became a favourite all over the world. Moreover, the half-Basque Ravel, born in a town near Spain, composed many works based on Spanish “national school”…

In the final analysis, we should not care much about the alleged national character or origin of music or its instruments. Such thoughts distract our attention from the essence of the matter, which is music itself. After all, who can trace its evolution? Who was the first person who noticed that a tense bowstring produces a sound? Who then found that the sound is amplified if there is something hollow to function as a soundboard?

Such discoveries are as old as man. So they should have taken place in Africa, the cradle of the human race. What does this mean? That music and its instruments are African-born? Of course not! It just means that in various periods of time, in several areas of the world, we can observe the emergence of the same instruments more or less, for they are based on the same natural laws.

In various times and spaces we observe the emergence of the same instruments more or less for they are based on the same natural laws.

Thus, all such “national” claims have ulterior motives, because music is also older than ownership, not only than nations. Besides, things are very simple – provided that we’ve got rid of the blinders of “ancestor-mania”, and that sense, even if it’s common, has prevailed:

“We say that a musical instrument belongs to the folk tradition of a country when its people have sung with this instrument their aspirations and sorrows, especially in times-watersheds in their history,” Phoebus Anogianakis writes with simplicity and clarity, cutting the… Gordian Knot, and bringing us down to earth from the nebulae of the ancients’ exaltation, and at the same time giving us the key so as to go deeper into the subject.

“Ethnomusicology recognizes that an instrument belongs to the folk tradition of a country based on this criterion. What we are mainly interested in is if this musical instrument has been loved and widely used by the people of this country, and also made by local craftsmen or by the local folk musicians themselves – no matter if this instrument has come from outside, from another country, nearby or distant.”

Only based on the above approach, therefore, we can say that the lyre and cithara, the mágadis and tríchordon, were Greek instruments. Because, in truth, all instruments used in ancient Hellas were imported from the Orient – except one: an instrument we know for sure that was invented by Greeks, not during the Classical but in the Hellenistic period and, moreover, outside Greece, in Alexandria, Egypt, the largest centre of Hellenism in the post-classical era. Ironically, this unique instrument with a “Greek patent” is not in use in Hellas anymore and has since been glorified in the hands of some Westerners – prominently those of Johann Sebastian Bach…

All instruments used in ancient Hellas were imported from the Orient
– except the hydraulis (pipe organ) that was invented by Greeks
but is not in use in Hellas anymore…

This instrument was the hydraulis, the water organ, today’s pipe organ, in its embryonic form. Its inventor was the Alexandrian engineer Ctesibius in the 3rd century BCE. Sometimes the invention is attributed to his contemporary Archimedes, though latter’s contribution should have been indirect, due to the achievements of his ingenious mind, as he was the most important figure in the realm of science in the ancient world. Quite rightly these Greek scientists are thought of as the spiritual fathers of Leonardo da Vinci and so many other inventive minds of Europe from the Renaissance onwards.

Ctesibius apparently based himself on the hydraulic inventions and applications of the Syracusan, mainly on Archimedean hydraulic clocks. Along with hydraulics, Ctesibius studied pneumatics – the science dealing with pneuma, that is, air, and its several applications.(e) In fact, he is considered as the… pneumatic (spiritual) father of this science, as he proved what others had already observed: that invisible air, gas, is something material.

Along with hydraulics, Ctesibius studied pneumatics – the science dealing with pneuma, that is, air, gas.

(e)Hydraulics and pneumatics are sister sciences: the former deals with liquids, the latter with gases.

Let me remark en passant that the rapid decline of the Greek language, due to the decline of Hellenism, in parallel with the spread – or rather: the imposition – of Christianity, had as a result a decline also in the semantics of ancient terms such as pneuma (breath), where only connotations contrasting with matter (i.e. mind, intellect, soul) have survived. The ancient pneuma, you see, was lost as soon as it turned into… “Holy Pneuma (Spirit or Ghost)”! In spite of all the Alexandrian treatises on pneumatics, there is no such entry in Modern Greek dictionaries…(f)

(f) Although Hellenic is the world’s oldest recordedliving language, the original meaning of the word pneumatic (of or relating to air, breath) was lost in Modern Greek, except in the so-called pneumatic tools (using air pressure). Note that e.g. in Romance languages we can find the same word (Italianpneumatico, French and Portuguesepneu, Spanish neumático) meaning pneumatic tyre. In Modern Greek, on the other hand, the relevant term inner tube is called sambrela, which is a loan from French (chambre à air). Thus, for the same thing more or less, some “barbarians” use a Hellenic word; the Greeks have a French loan instead…

Well, what pneumatics anyway? After all, no work of Ctesibius has survived. The opposite is true in the case of a later engineer whose work is partly extant – although he remains similarly inconspicuous among the Hellenes. He was an Alexandrian, as well, called Hero(n), and lived sometime between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE. Apart from his numerous wonderful inventions – e.g. his aeolipile or steam engine, a windwheel, and also gates that opened automatically – he perfected Ctesibius’ water organ based on the principles of pneumatics. However, if the Modern Greeks hear his name by chance and wish to learn more about him, they are obliged to consult foreign publications, since his treatises have never been published in modern Hellas…

The work of the Alexandrian engineers could not go unnoticed in Rome or Constantinople that were great powers. Among other inventions the Byzantine scientists admired Hero’s “automata” and perfected them. There were several such mechanisms in the palaces (golden plane trees with singing birds, lions and other wild animals roaring while turning their necks, griffins flapping their wings, etc) in order to impress foreign visitors.

Church (pipe) organ

The hydraulic organ was equally impressive; thus the musical instrument ended up… diplomatic. In the 8th century, the Byzantine emperor Constantine V, the so-called… Copronymus,(g) donated an organ to the Frankish king Pepin the… Short – the instrument is now known all over the world by the Greek term organ (meaning instrument among other things) – and what followed is common knowledge more or less. You can see the potential impact of gifts exchanged between “Blue bloods” on the history of music: no matter if diplomacy has never promoted culture, politics influences its development – as a rule negatively.

(g)Copronymus, meaning dung-christened! Obviously, he was… “rewarded” with this epithet by ecclesiastical circles because he was an iconoclast. They said that he supposedly… stooled in the font when he was baptized! The usual Christian venom…

Political history, however, developed in another direction. Despite the Byzantine gifts to the Occident, the underlying Schism between the Churches was formalized,(h) the Holy See declared a “holy war” against the “infidels” (probably under the sound of… pipe organs), and that’s how the Crusades began leading to the first fall of Constantinople, since the Orthodox Christians were included among the “infidels” – or else among the “heretics” who are always… worse than the “infidels”! The control of the Orient necessitated the overthrow of “Romanía” and the division of the booty between the Frankish plunderers and their Venetian instigators.

(h) How is it possible a self-advertised “religion of love” to be plagued by an avalanche of schisms and (“holy” or “unholy”) wars? As usual, Christianism emerges as the champion in this field, as well, followed by the other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam.

It was the beginning of the end, a crucial turning point, a development that left its indelible stamp on the history of not only the Mediterranean, or even Europe, but also the whole world, because since then everything changed. It marked the end of the epoch that began in the Near East during the Neolithic era, with the birth of civilization, and the Mediterranean as the epicentre of history. Mare nostrum was de facto marginalized. Its fortunes would since be governed by non-Mediterranean powers.

The Crusades (1096-1204): 1st (purple route), 2nd (green), 3rd (red) and 4th Crusade (orange): it started from Venice and ended in Constantinople, the ultimate goal of Venetians and Franks.

As usual, the perpetrators made sure of their “absolution” through their propaganda that even their victims reproduce – perhaps because perpetrators and victims are now “allies”, “partners”! Whitewashing first became grotesque (with all those… “Crusades for peace” that constitute the zenith of hypocrisy) and then macabre – as soon as bombs started falling in the first… “Humanitarian war” in history, even without the consent of the United Nations!

Let’s open our dictionaries again: the Crusaders have been “Medieval warriors who took part in the campaigns of Western Christians against people of another faith mainly for the liberation of the Holy Land”! Who from? Who else but the “infidels”, the Muslims. The Greek lexicographers and others do not seem to bother at all that these lands have been equally holy for Islam, or that the Muslims are rather more religious than the Christians. I honestly cannot understand how comes that Greek historians portray the Crusaders as “liberators” of Jerusalem in 1099, and at the same time as “conquerors” of Constantinople in 1204…

Crusaders: “liberators” of Jerusalem, but “conquerors” of Constantinople!
Whitewashing first became grotesque (with all those… “Crusades for peace”) and then macabre – as soon as bombs started falling in the first… “Humanitarian war” in history!

We may have deviated from our path, but in essence our subject dealt not so much with the Thracian or Asian origin of music, as with the futility of the ancients’ exaltation, and especially of “ancestor-mania”, which is nothing but empty words. See, for example, the hydraulis we were lucky to excavate at Dion:(i) It was initially announced that the instrument was polyphonic. Doesn’t this mean that the music of late antiquity was also polyphonic? Was there a thorough research in advance, or such a conclusion was reported lightheartedly? The aim was to restore the instrument or to revamp it in the font of European polyphony?

(i) A tomb stele with a depiction of nabla was also found at Dion.

A diaulos player in a symposium, by Euaion painter

Can we possibly assume that the ancient musicians we see depicted so often with diaulos (double aulos) played in… thirds?(j) Or that on the multi-reed syrinx (Pan pipe) they could play… chords? It is inconceivable to me that the hydraulis can be suitable for… Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, exactly as we fail to perform pieces of modal music on the pipe organ. Each instrument is made based on the specifications of the kind of music which is prescribed for.

(j) The now dominant two-note consonance, the third, was considered as dissonance and cacophony by ancient Hellenes and Byzantines alike.

“Big deal”, is the cynical answer. Some… Jurassic Park enthusiasts seem determined to make up for the water organ’s lost time, mastering the repertoire of the pipe organ and also composing new music especially for the hydraulis. And what we do is to put the blame solely on such… cloners!